HARRY MILLER - Children At Play

 

(Originally posted on Facebook, 10 November 2024)

I wasn't going to go ahead and write the next entry in my survey of Ogun Records in the light of world events last week, but after some considerable thought I came to the conclusion that the writing needed to go on, even if it only forms an additional sail to my tiny tugboat of resistance. So here goes:

 

HARRY MILLER: Children At Play

(OG 200)

 

Track listing: H And H/Children At Play (Phase I And II)/Homeboy/Foregone Conclusion/Children At Play (Phase III)

 

Harry Miller (multitracked double bass, flute on "Homeboy" and "percussion effects")

 

Recorded in Hastings, 1974; produced and mixed by Keith Beal 

 

As the co-founder and co-owner of Ogun Records, it was only right and fair that Harry Miller should have an album all to himself. A fairly important album, too, since it set the scene for Miller's composing and arranging abilities.

 

Miller had hitherto been known as a highly respected bassist, playing a key supporting and prompting role in the various bands of Mike Westbrook, Chris McGregor, Bob Downes, Mike Osborne and others, as well as ventures outside the realm of jazz in his work with Mike Cooper and King Crimson. But he had not been known as a composer or bandleader in his own right.

 

Children At Play was quite a striking departure. Solo albums by jazz bassists were at the time exceptionally rare; in fact, I can only think of Barre Phillips' Unaccompanied Barre from 1969. Other solo recitals by Barry Guy and Dave Holland would follow later in the seventies (interestingly, all three of these musicians worked successfully with Miller as half of a two-bass set-up in various settings).

 

But Children At Play is not an improvised (or indeed written) solo recital. Instead, Miller used the occasion as an opportunity to experiment. There are multitracked basses, usually two and sometimes three in number, deployed in highly organised arrangements.

 

The album seems to have been recorded at Ogun co-owner Keith Beal's home studio in Hastings. I remember a Melody Maker interview where Miller spoke about Beal's house being literally situated on the edge of a cliff, exposed to rather vicious winds from the sea, and there is certainly something of the dark and stormy night about the thirty-six-or-so minutes of music here.

 

The record begins agreeably enough with the funky jam "H And H" (which I have always assumed stands for Hazel and Harry). Miller hits a compelling groove and throws in some of those "percussion effects" with excellent results (the cowbell is the key factor here). Somebody really ought to sample this.

 

The first two "phases" of the title track handle the main melody on pizzicato and arco bass(es) respectively. The first section is indeed quite playful, Miller audibly enjoying scampering around the upper notes (below the bridge) like a happy kitten. But the second section is more sombre in mood - a useful comparison here would be Miller and Phillips' bowed bass duet on Westbrook's "Landscape" from Marching Song, a work mostly inspired by the then-recent canonisation of World War I. Set at the dawn of battle, one is reminded that 1914 was also the time when the Viennese school of composers really began to make their mark; there's quite a touch of Alban Berg's Lyric Suite about the proceedings - and less comforting.

 

Then the clouds break and we meet the album's happiest moment, the old-school kwela workout of "Home Boy" with Miller's basses thumping out the rhythm and skittering around the tune's borders. Miller takes to the flute to carry the main melody, and although his flute playing clearly wasn't going to give Bob Downes any sleepless nights, its nostalgic naivety is reassuring; if anything, he appears to be blowing the flute in the manner of a penny whistle, rekindling the memory of Spokes Mashiyane, Kippie Moeketsi and others.

 

Side two opens with the album's big setpiece, "Foregone Conclusion" - and one can certainly palpate the rattling of metaphorical chains and the aura of ghosts in the air. The house feels dark and not quite empty. The tone of the piece is austere and rather unforgiving and some listeners may detect a Mahlerian heaviness.

 

Yet what this extended piece does is remind us that there are evil spirits in this environment, or more correctly the environment from which Miller and his fellow South African musicians had fled - one of midnight home visits and distantly-felt beatings. That pulse is never really absent from what is otherwise a fairly uncompromising, yet utterly heartfelt, composition. If you listen closely enough you may even discern the winds howling outside the house's windows.

 

The record concludes with a mournful and poignant reprise and extension of the "Children At Play" theme. In ways it does remind me of the equally unapologetic political works of Charlie Haden, but Miller engaged a significant figure to write the sleevenote - Zweledinga Pallo Jordan, then on the National Executive of the African National Congress, later an ANC MP and Cabinet Minister.

 

In it, Jordan speaks of Miller's art as being "expressive of a cultural recycling" in the sense of jazz and improvised music being reclaimed and revitalised by the roots from which it had first sprung. Listening to this album, one is also very regrettably reminded, in this week of all weeks, that Miller might have been thinking of metaphorical children - repressive, infantile politicians, playing with people's lives and indeed the world, to unspeakable effect.

 

Current availability: Reissued on CD as part of The Collection in 1999; although that is long out of print, the album is now available as a download here.